STAFF at a city centre shop took a messy stand as part of a national protest about oil.

The sticky stunt in Lush Cosmetics in Queensgate Shopping Centre on Thursday saw Sylvia Whittaker sat in a oil drum draped in the Canadian flag as her colleagues Marie Woodard and Mel Staples poured black “oil” over her.

It is part of the soap chain’s nationwide protest, in all of its 95 UK shops, against Canadian tar sands oil.

The chain is calling for the European Union to ban tar sands fuel under the Fuel Quality Directive because to extract oil, forests are being cut down, the land strip-mined and the dirt boiled with water to separate the oil.